COUNTING WHALES IN A CHALLENGING, CHANGING HABITAT

by oceansadminEcosystems, Human Impacts, Populations, WhalesPosted on No Comments
Antarctic minke whale surfacing in front of a tabular iceberg along the western Antarctic Peninsula

 

Few marine conservation issues are more contentious than Japan’s “scientific whaling” program, which allows for the killing of up to 935 whales each year. This number is large, relative to hunts of other whales in other parts of the world, but small relative to the hundreds of thousands of Antarctic minke whales in the population.

To many conservation scientists, though, it’s not the absolute number of whales in the population that matters — what we care about is whether the population is going up or down.  And we’ve known for more than a decade that the Antarctic minke whale population appears to be declining.

That’s bad.  But if the whales’ sea ice habitat is being affected by global climate change, its long term trajectory may be even worse.  That would make Antarctic minke whales an icon of climate change — a Southern Ocean counterpart to the polar bear in the Arctic.  One problem:  Antarctic minke whales are even more difficult to count than polar bears.

That’s the context in which we partnered with the German and Dutch Antarctic programs, with input from British, American and Australian scientists.  We conducted the first icebreaker-supported helicopter surveys in open water and adjacent ice-covered waters along the edge of the sea ice in the Weddell Sea.  Our study found that there is a high density band of whales just along the ice edge, where ship surveys are confounded by fickle navigational safety issues.  That region is home to high concentrations of the whales’ favourite food, krill.  That region is being affected by climate change in different ways in different regions of the Southern Ocean.  And maddeningly, just as we are beginning to understand the threat, changing ice conditions may be changing the surveys we use to monitor the health of the whales’ population.  Depending on the ice conditions on a given day, a ship may or may not be able to access this high density region.  And that affects our ability to tell if the population is going up or down.

Australia is suing to end Japan’s special permit whaling.  The International Court of Justice will announce its decision tomorrow.  Regardless of that decision, our research shows that if we really want to know how this population is being affected by climate change, we need bigger and much more expensive surveys than ever before.

Five Ways to Show Your Love for the Ocean.

by oceansadminAcoustics, Dolphins, Ecosystems, Habitat, Human ImpactsPosted on No Comments

Whale you be my Valentine? I dolphinately will! Illustration by Leafeon via Quid Pro Quo on Tumblr

 

Love prompts us to do brave, romantic and sometimes foolish things.  To paraphrase Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, today we’re asking ourselves:  How do I love thee, Ocean?  Let me count the ways.  We came up with 5.  On Valentine’s Day this year, here are a five healthy, sane ways to show your love for the ocean.

 

“They do not love that do not show their love”
Shakespeare, from Two Gentleman of Verona

 

1. Say No to plastics:  Marine wildlife accidentally eat and ingest plastics in the ocean, which blocks their stomachs and can cause them to starve.  Alternatively, they can get tangled in plastic, which causes them to suffer and suffocate.  Either way, it is a huge problem.  What can you do?

♥ Use re-useable grocery and shopping bags.  More and more cities and small towns are banning plastic bags.  Be ahead of the curve and pack a Chico bag or other tote everywhere you go.

♥ Sip your water from sleek, BPA-free water bottles (we love these from Kleen Kanteen) or other re-usable bottle.

♥ Straws suck! Consider going straw free when indulging in your next cocktail (it will cut down on pesky mouth wrinkles).  If you’re married to straws, channel your inner Nacho Figueras by using these Oprah-approved stainless steel straws.

 

2. Eat organic and local:  The killer whales we study in the Pacific Northwest are some of the most contaminated marine mammals on the planet.  No wonder they are endangered! Toxins from pesticides, antibiotics, and fertilizers used in conventional farming practices eventually find their way into our oceans, into the fish the we and the whales eat and eventually into our bodies where they cause harm.  Luckily, you can help by:

♥  Buy organic whenever you can.  If organic is not an option, stay away from the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen and focus on the Clean Fifteen.

♥ Shop at your local farmer’s markets (find yours here) and choosing minimally packaged foods when you shop!  While in Scotland, we love going to our local farm shop where we actually see the fields where our food grows!

♥ Dine out at restaurants that include local and organic menu items.  Places like Chipotle are relatively inexpensive, and check out their extraordinary commercial on factory farming.

 

3. Sustainable Seafood:  Bycatch in fishing nets poses one of the largest threats to the survival of whales and dolphins on the planet.  Each day, thousands of dolphins drown in fishing nets.  There are standards, but they vary worldwide, which is why it is important to make informed decisions.  At home in the Pacific Northwest, our research has shown that harbour porpoise may be at risk from bycatch in gillnet fisheries in the Salish Sea, and this warrants additional research.  Porpoise caught in hook-and-line fisheries (e.g., trolling) are unlikely to cause much marine mammal bycatch.

♥ Choose sustainable seafood with a free guide from the Vancouver Aquarium or US regional guides available for free from the Monterey Bay Aquarium

♥ Choose wild salmon, never farmed salmon

 

4. Buy less stuff and reduce impacts of global shipping: Noise in the ocean has increased in some areas ten-fold over the last few decades.  Why?  More than 90% of the things we buy in North America are shipped from overseas, using massive container ships that produce a lot of noise underwater.  The ocean soundscape is now dominated by the noise of these distant ships.  This is bad news for whales, dolphins, fish and other marine life that depend on sound to communicate, find mates and food.  Think about this tonight while you’re trying to hear your Valentine’s sweet nothings over dinner in a crowded restaurant.  How can you help?

♥ Buy locally made products whenever you can or join Patagonia’s Common Threads Initiative

♥ Buy gifts on Etsy

♥ Make your own gifts!  There are thousands of amazing DIY project ideas on Pinterest

♥ Check out our Quiet Ocean Campaign.  We’re working hard to keep quiet places quiet for whales and dolphins.   

 

5. Share the love:

♥ Tweet about this post or like it on Facebook by clicking on the sidebar.

♥ Leave a comment on our website to share more ideas for showing your ocean love.

♥ Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated on ocean issues by entering your email address in the box in the upper right corner of this page.

♥ Make a tax-deductible donation to support our research, conservation and education initiatives to protect whales, dolphins, sharks and other marine life.  Or, donate frequent-flyer points to Aeroplan’s Charitable Pooling Account for Oceans Initiative. This helps us cut the cost of doing the work we do.  Thanks for your support!  We wish you and your loved ones a very Happy Valentine’s Day!

SHARKS IN BC?

by oceansadminEcosystems, PopulationsPosted on No Comments

| iStockphoto

Mark Hume, at the Globe & Mail, just published a neat new story about our recently published paper on sharks in BC (with Tom Okey, Scott Wallace and Vince Gallucci).  The paper was published months ago, but became newsworthy again recently in light of the Cohen Commission’s discussions about the potential role of marine predators in governing salmon population dynamics in BC.  Over and over again at that hearing, we heard that scientists, managers and decision-makers in BC need good estimates of abundance for top predators in our marine ecosystem.

Our shark survey, which we conducted with Raincoast Conservation, was originally designed to estimate abundance and distribution of cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) in BC, because that number wasn’t available at the time for species that can’t be studied using photo-identification.  Thanks to an incredibly hard-working team with strong stomachs (we crossed Hecate Strait dozens of times on a relatively small sailboat), we accomplished our primary goal and achieved a number of secondary objectives.  The shark study was a great bonus, but so was our estimate of how much plastic pollution there is in BC waters.  [There is a story on our garbage sightings here, but the peer-reviewed article is coming out in Marine Pollution Bulletin soon.]  We used the data to evaluate where fin, humpback and killer whales are most vulnerable to ship strike risk.  Don’t tell anyone, but we’re also working on a paper on Mola mola (those weird, giant ocean sunfish) in our spare time with sunfish expert, Dr Tierney Thys.  At the same time, we collected zooplankton data, physical oceanographic data (temperature, salinity), and had a seabird observer on board.  We are dying to find the funds to hire a statistician to turn those bird sightings into abundance estimates for seabirds, but that’s a bit of an aside.

Our surveys were conducted initially in 2004, and it’s getting time to start thinking about redoing them.  The thought of all that fundraising and planning is a bit overwhelming, but when we look back at the scientific return on investment, it looks those surveys represented pretty good value.  And who could have anticipated that (a) we’d find massive numbers of sharks; (b) that the salmon people hadn’t considered those predators in their ecosystem models, and (c) that there would be catastrophic sockeye salmon runs in the Fraser River years later that would require us to re-think marine ecosystem functioning in a holistic manner?  Initially, we conducted the surveys out of concern that Canada would lift a moratorium on offshore oil and gas exploration and extraction, and we wanted to be able to quantify the risk to the marine mammals that we study.  That threat has subsided, it seems.  We hope that the next use of our science is in the Pacific North Coast Integrated Management Area planning process.

I guess one lesson here is that basic science never goes out of style.  The other is, as Mark says, if we’re going to continue our work on a bigger scale, we’re gonna need a bigger boat.  [Well, you knew we had to get the Jaws quote in there, right?]

REMEMBER, THE CAMERA ADDS 10 TONNES…

by oceansadminAcoustics, Dolphins, Ecosystems, Habitat, Whales, Women in SciencePosted on 2 Comments

At New Year’s, we all make resolutions about diet. But we’ve got nothing on Pacific humpback whales, which are currently on their mating and calving grounds in Hawaii and Mexico. During this time, they go weeks or months without eating at all. BC waters provide important habitat for these highly migratory animals. When they’re here in summer, they only have a few months to put on all the fat reserves they need to migrate over 4000km (each way) across the ocean, calve, mate, nurse their calves and return to BC to start the cycle all over again. From our perspective, this creates a sense of responsibility for Canadian resource management: human activities that degrade the quality of feeding habitat in BC waters carries consequences that affect the whales throughout the rest of their range.

WE LOVE THE BBC SERIES, “NATURE’S GREAT EVENTS“.

Humpback whales eat a lot, and they accomplish all of this without teeth.  How do they do that?  An incredibly gifted filmmaker, Shane Moore shot this extraordinary footage for the BBC that shows the northeast Pacific ecosystem much better than we ever could describe in words (although Sir David Attenborough comes a close second to the whales themselves). [Please note:  BBC put this link on youtube, but they’ve also put some other amazing footage on their site, which we encourage you to see.] Enough lead-in.  Check out this frenzy of seabirds, herring and whales:

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH…

Of course, not all marine mammals migrate. Some, like the Pacific white-sided dolphins we study, have been seen in our study area every month of the year.  Dolphins, including the killer whale (the largest member of the dolphin family) do not fast over the winter months. Instead, they eat like we do — constantly.  And dolphins and killer whales both have teeth, and big brains, to help them come up with clever ways to find their prey.

The following video shows dolphins and killer whales hunting.  You might want to watch this on your own before deciding whether it’s appropriate for younger viewers.  [Note.  We collect our photographs and video under a research permit.  We learn a lot through photo-ID, but we are obviously not filmmakers.]

[vsw id=”14224604″ source=”vimeo” width=”600″ height=”400″ autoplay=”no”]

Listen.  Everybody’s gotta eat.  The whales aren’t doing this because they hate dolphins.  They’re doing this because, like dolphins, us and all organisms that can’t feed themselves through photosynthesis, whales need to eat to survive.  Our colleague, Jackie Hildering, recently witnessed a similar event.

A lot of our work aims to estimate abundance of whales, dolphins and other top predators, because we want to see ecosystem-based fishery management practices that ensure that nutritional needs of marine wildlife are taken into consideration when setting fishing quotas.  But lately, we’re growing concerned about the potential for underwater noise to mask the ability of a whale or dolphin to find its prey or detect when predators are nearby.  Going back to Shane Moore’s tremendous BBC footage, a frenzy like that must make some noise that a humpback whale could hear and use to locate a school of fish.  OK.  We’re guessing at that — it hasn’t been proven scientifically (although this is a research question we’d love to take on).  Our colleagues have shown convincingly that killer whales use sound to find and locate their prey, so it’s not rocket science to guess that human-caused noise can disrupt that sensitive acoustic system.

OK.  Maybe we shouldn’t make this all about human activities.  Maybe you should forget the text, watch that BBC footage again and just appreciate, as we do, how neat these animals are.